


High Flight

by damalur



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Flying, Post-Slash, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 15:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the absence of memory, Carol learns about falling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Flight

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to know more about the period between Carol losing her memories and the Avengers flying off to fight the Builders; this is an attempt to explore that microcosm, although it plays fast and loose with the timeline and ignores all the stuff I don't care about (like Frank Gianelli—sorry, Frank). Title, excerpts, and inspiration all come courtesy of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who wrote the poem _High Flight._ Magee was an RCAF officer who died in 1941, when his Spitfire collided with another plane. Beta work comes courtesy of Lotte, who is a totally delightful human being and also pretty excellent at spelling.

1.

_Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth_  
_And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;_

It wasn't as bad as her visitors made it out to be. At first the days slid together without any demarcation between the last and the next, but Carol was so busy sleeping that she wouldn't have noticed if the sun went spiraling off to inhabit some other arm of the galaxy.

 _"Spiraling_ off," she'd said to Jess. "Get it? Because—"

"Of all the things you could've retained, did the one thing that stuck around have to be your sense of humor?" Jess demanded.

In the moment, she laughed at that, easy with Jessica despite recalling nothing other than some thin, silvered thread of feeling that made her light up whenever the other woman walked into her hospital room. Later, she took it out and examined it, turned it over, pulled it apart, and added it to the list of things she was learning about herself: _I think I'm funny._ Below it went another item: _Jessica is my friend._

Boredom set in before her energy returned. The doctors said that was to be expected, even accounting for her unusual power-set. "You've undergone a great deal of trauma over the course of the past weeks," one of them said. "It doesn't matter that the trauma was psychological as well as physical—your body needs to rest."

She struggled to sit up, biting back the wince that threatened to spill across her face; with that habit came a flash of memory, one of those out-of-context blooms of recall that were almost more frustrating than the total blankness that preceded them. In the memory, she was—young, probably; and she was sitting across the table from her father; and she was fighting very hard to keep the tears that gathered in her eyes from showing.

"Carol?" the doctor said.

"My, uh—powers," she said. It still felt weird to talk about them. "You said you don't fully get how they work, right?"

"That's an understatement," the doctor said. "We've consulted with xenobiologists, of course, but your hybrid physiology means that even the leading experts on the Kree are only guessing at what you can do and how you'll heal."

"Stick with me, doctor," said Carol. "I had a thought—I absorb energy, don't I?"

"I'd ask you to tell me, but we both agreed that it's too early for you to experiment," said the doctor. "Didn't we?"

"We did agree that," said Carol. "But what if it could help me? A little sunlight, a little fresh air... Maybe it'd trigger something. Get me back on my feet faster." She flashed a quick grin at the doctor, knowing that her poker face had failed her and hoping that bravado would carry her through anyway.

The doctor sighed, and then, reluctantly amused, she returned Carol's grin. "Getting bored, Ms. Danvers?"

"There's a garden on the hospital roof," Carol pointed out.

"So there is." The amusement had overridden the reluctance; Carol wondered if that was a common reaction, if people walked away from conversations with her feeling like they'd been pulled along against their own better judgment. "I'm willing to authorize it—"

"Yes!"

 _"If_ you'll start being frank with me about the amnesia," said the doctor. "I know it can't be as easy to handle as you're making it out to be."

Ah. She smoothed the blanket out over her thighs; it wasn't long enough, and her toes were constantly poking out the bottom. Another item for the list: _Tall._ She had some bulk on her, too, curvy hips, sure, but more than that, there was a sleek layer of muscle across her arms and shoulders—not as much as there was in the pictures Jessica had shown her, but enough to make her think that she'd been able to handle herself in a tight spot even before she'd gone all Kree.

"Carol?"

"It's not as bad as everyone thinks it is," she said. "I get...flashes, sometimes. Hints." She shrugged. "More feeling than anything else. Instinct."

"Does it concern you that you might never fully regain your memories?"

"Isn't that a question that should be coming from a psychologist?" Carol shot back.

"Would you be willing to talk to one?" the doctor countered, so fast with the suggestion that Carol was now sure she'd been led into a trap.

"Sure," she said. "Fine. Can I go up to the roof now?"

"Not unattended," said the doctor. "That's another of my conditions. And I want your word that you'll come back and sleep as soon as you start to feel fatigued. That means listening to your body, Carol, not pushing it past its limits."

"All right, doctor."

"And I'll make an appointment with one of our specialists. He specializes in therapy for first responders, but he's worked with several amnesiacs before. I think you'll like him."

Carol looked away, out the window. She didn't have much of a view; a parking garage blocked most of it, but there was a bird that had built a nest in a concrete crevice directly across from her room, and if she waited long enough, she could sometimes watch it swoop in with a bit of grass or a twig to patch its nest.

The old Carol, the Carol she couldn't remember being, had more friends than she could count and had apparently been quick with a one-liner, too; that Carol came to her in fits of extroversion and then abandoned her just as quickly.

The doctor waited for a long moment for her to respond, and then, when she didn't, said only, "I'll see if we have an aide free to escort you outside." The was a rustle, the sound of footsteps, and then the curtains and door sliding closed. She had a room to herself, which was, according to Jessica, one of the perks of being an Avenger. That, and the dental coverage.

The old Carol Danvers had by all accounts been military to her bones, a woman comfortable with structure and used to following orders; that awareness made it easier to do something that the old Carol Danvers would never have done. Carol gave herself to the count of fifty, and then she slid out of bed, tugged on a robe, and made her escape.

She took the access staircase, which was less likely than the elevator to hold someone who would recognize her and send her back to bed, but the going was slow; she had to pause on every landing to catch her breath, but her room was on one of the uppermost floors, and she was on the roof soon enough. There were a few staff people eating lunch at a picnic table behind an ivy bed, and a handful of patients, most accompanied by oxygen tanks, IV stands, nurses, or all three, but none of them looked twice at Carol. Good. Good.

She made her way to the side of the building opposite the parking garage; there was a corner half-hidden by some kind of flowering shrub that Carol doubted she'd ever known the name of, and behind the cover, she braced her hands on the stone ledge and looked down.

The street was far enough below that she could blot out the dumpsters with a thumb; it was dizzying—heady, and not in a good way. Vertigo slammed into her, and she took a hard step back, and then another. The wind picked up; it was blowing from the south, like it wanted to push her back towards the edge, and when she refused to move, it rushed her hair instead, whipping it around her face.

"Figured I'd find you up here," someone said.

Carol turned into the wind. "Excuse me?"

"The doc said you were supposed to be waiting for someone to take you up to the roof, but I told her waiting wasn't your style. Sorry," the man said, and offered his hand. "Jim Rhodes."

She gave him a long once-over; his bearing was erect in a way that said _military_ , but there was something else, too, that she'd seen in some of the other people who had come to visit her—determination, maybe, or experience. He stood like there was nothing that could surprise him. 

He was also handsome enough that Carol became immediately aware that she wasn't wearing a bra under her robe and thin hospital shirt. She reached out and took his hand anyway. "Carol," she said, "but I think you know that already. Air Force?"

His handshake was firm, and he didn't do the obnoxious thing some men did where he only took the tips of her fingers. Carol may have forgotten a lot, but she was pretty damn sure she'd always abhorred that. At the words 'Air Force,' he winced. "Marine Corps, actually," he said, "although the service isn't our primary point of contact. Avengers," he added.

"Oh," Carol said. "Oh! You're Tony's Rhodey."

"I'd like to deny it, but Stockholm Syndrome got me long ago," he said. "Tone's been to see you already?"

"With Cap," Carol said. She pulled her robe shut and used one hand to keep it that way. "He brought me a tablet. It talks."

"He does that," said Jim.

"He was very…"

Jim raised an eyebrow.

"Generous," Carol finally decided on. She'd wanted to ask why he'd kept calling Steve 'Captain Handsome,' but it seemed impolite to speculate—not that that had stopped her; Jessica had managed to assert through her cackling that it was a 'private joke.' 

"No, no—spit it out, Danvers."

"They aren't… Are they… You know." She stuck both of her pointer fingers out and jabbed them together a couple of times.

"...Are you twelve?" Jim said. "And trust me, that is a question you don't wanna be asking. Willful ignorance has carried me this far. The last thing I want to think about is Tony's love life."

"Got it," she said. "I will direct all further nosiness to my tablet. Did I mention that it talks?"

"Only twice." Jim put his hands in his pockets. "How are you holding up?"

Carol was paralyzed, suddenly and again, by her own lack of context. How close had they been? They knew each other, but how well? He'd come to visit her but wasn't in the first rush of visitors—or maybe that was because he hadn't been able to get leave until now. His phasing suggested that he was still active duty in some capacity, even though Carol herself wasn't.

"Ready to get out of here," she finally settled on.

"Sounds about right," Jim said. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and his forearms… they were very good forearms. "The amnesia's gotta be weird. Not the weirdest thing I've come across, but weird."

"Oh, yeah? What's weirder than having shrapnel from an alien machine that caused a brain lesion to erase my memories when I broke atmo?" Carol challenged.

"I was a cyborg for a while," Jim said mildly. Carol jerked back and stared at him, and he shrugged. "I got better. Number one rule of being an Avenger: it can always get weirder."

"Wonderful," said Carol.

"It is. That's rule number two—it's worth it."

"Everyone else seems to think so," she said, and shuffled a few steps away, to a bench bookended with garish topiaries. Jim watched her for a minute, and then he came and sat down beside her. He was taller than she was, but not by a lot; his forearms continued to be excellent. "So what's your power?" she said. "Other than being an ex-cyborg."

"Putting up with Tony Stark," he said, and Carol, startled, burst into laughter. "Other than that and being an ex-cyborg, though, I've got a suit of armor—an exo-skeleton. Like Iron Man, but with superior firepower."

"Are you sure Tony's superpower isn't putting up with you?" She never meant to tease the strangers who came to see her, but some of them brought it out in her; it was one of those instincts, those gut-feeling reflexes that came to her in place of real recollection.

Jim smirked at her. "We're stuck with each other. Stockholm Syndrome goes both ways." 

That reminded her of something Tracy would say, and she felt briefly lifted that she now knew another person well enough to have that thought. Tracy always managed to make it look like she'd simply had occasion to be at the hospital for reasons of her own, but Jess had grudgingly admitted that not even Tracy had medical reason to be at the hospital every day.

"So," Carol said. "The Avengers."

"Having a hard time wrapping your head around it, huh?"

"It's like something from a book," Carol said. "Aliens and gods and villains? Straight out of Heinlein."

"Don't pay too much attention to the media," Jim told her. "They make the team larger-than-life when it's more a crew of misfits who play poker on Friday nights and share a thing for primary colors."

Carol had intended to point out that that crew of misfits had more than once saved _the entire planet,_ but what came out of her mouth was, "We play poker?"

"Sure."

 _"Strip_ poker?" Carol blurted.

"Uh… no. Not unless those games with the X-Men get a lot crazier than I realized."

"Right," Carol said. "Just checking." God, she had to change the subject. What had he mentioned before? Tony Stark, the Marine Corps, being a cyborg—no, the last one probably wasn't the kind of thing you could just ask people about, although she was sometimes hit with sheer wonder at how unlikely her apparent life was. Maybe she _could_ —

Her train of thought was broken by a buzzing from overhead; the buzzing increasing to a rhythmic roar, a fast _whrr-whrr-whrr_ that had her automatically shading her eyes and tilting her head back. It took her a few seconds to spot it, but there, high at her three o'clock, was a medical helicopter going in for a landing on a higher roof at the far side of the hospital complex. The sight of two thousand pounds of steel hanging in the air sent a chill through her for no reason she could explain, and her heart started throbbing as the chopper cut overhead.

She tracked it until it set down on the pad. The engine shut off, but the main rotor was still turning as the medical crew rushed forward.

"Maybe you haven't lost all that much," Jim said, and Carol jerked back and stared at him. He was lowering his own hand as she spoke, and that was when she realized he'd shared her reflex—that when he'd heard the engines overhead, his only instinct had been to look _up._

 

2.

_Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth_  
_Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things_  
_You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung_  
_High in the sunlit silence._

She had dreams; and she thought they were dreams about hanging in suspension above the world while something important was taken from her. That, frustratingly, could have meant half a dozen instances her in very weird life, or it could have meant nothing at all. She kept waking up in the middle of the night feeling like something heavy was on her chest, and for the first blazing seconds she would want to struggle, and then she would inevitably realize that the something heavy was her cat.

Chewie whined when Carol rolled over and dumped her onto the mattress, but Carol rubbed her between the ears and, placated, the cat settled down and rolled a half-turn so her spine was twisted. It didn't look comfortable, even for a cat.

They'd moved into Avengers Tower as soon as the hospital had cleared her for release. Jessica had offered to put Carol up at her apartment, of course, but Carol wasn't in the mood to sleep on a couch, and they'd both agreed that the familiarity of the team might help spark something. Living there was… It was exhilarating and exhausting, messy and hilarious and stifling; being called by her name a thousand times a day was the best trick she'd found for keeping herself grounded in her own skin.

Nights were harder.

"Mrr?" said Chewie, but Carol knew better than to give in to the invitation for a belly rub; she pushed to her feet and went out to the hall, making sure to pull the door shut behind her. Chewie, for the time being, was confined to Carol's suite. It seemed safest in a building where there were all kinds of Hulks and god-only-knew what-elses roaming around.

She started for the kitchen automatically. The tower's lights were dimmed in deference to the late hour, although there was almost always someone else up and around. Tony in particular never seemed to sleep; Carol wasn't surprised to hear his voice coming from behind one of the closed doors she passed, but she was surprised to hear Captain America's voice rising to meet him. They were arguing about something. She couldn't make out distinct words, but the tones of their voices made that much clear. There was a final, punctuated burst from Tony, and then the sound of an interior door slamming. Carol kept moving.

The kitchen was big and sleek and housed half a dozen refrigerators simply to keep up with the caloric intake of a team of meta-humans. She pulled open the closest and started rummaging; there was an unlabeled container of artichoke dip next to a six-pack of honey lager that looked promising, and she tucked the dip under her elbow and pulled out one of the bottles before heading to the cabinet for chips. Her hunt for a bottle opener proved less than fruitful; there were all kinds of damn gadgets in the drawers, but none of them were what she wanted, and she finally resorted to applying a glowing thumb to the bottle cap.

She was about the take a swig when a dark hand closed over hers and lifted the bottle away from her. "Pretty sure you don't want to do that," said Jim.

"What?"

"You don't drink," he said, and he carried the bottle over to the sink and dumped it down the drain. "Nobody told you that?"

"I…" She thought hard. "Jess mentioned something about it, back at the hospital."

"You're four, maybe five years sober now."

Jesus. She was an _alcoholic._

Jim was still talking. "Don't think you go to AA anymore. There's some soda next to the stove, but I was gonna put on a pot of coffee. I have an early morning."

"I didn't even realize you were here," Carol said. Not only was she an alcoholic—apparently everyone knew that about her. She hated that she had at one point put that weakness on display.

"Just passing through," said Jim. "Headed down to Quantico and then Atlanta. Don't look so sad, Danvers—I'll be back next week. Tony bribed me with upgrades."

But maybe it was better this way; maybe it was better knowing that she had people she trusted enough to help her. After that first sharp shock, she found she wasn't as embarrassed as she'd expected to be. It didn't _bother_ her that Jim knew, and she was glad he'd arrived in time to take the bottle out of her hand before she'd done something stupid.

She took her chips and dip over to one of the barstools and settled in to watch Jim make coffee. He didn't have to do much; the Avengers' coffee maker was enormous and complicated and had a touch screen. Jim tapped in a couple of commands and went to find mugs; he located one that said 'WAR MACHINE ROX' on the side and another with a Red Sox logo. Carol assumed that one was hers.

"I heard arguing," Carol said.

"Tweedledee and Tweedledumbass? Can't say I'm surprised. Tony's been pulling away again."

"I thought they were…" She'd read about the whole mess with the Superhuman Registration Act, and Tracy had filled in a lot of the blanks. "Reconciled."

"Maybe. They put on a good front, anyway, but I'm not sure Tones trusts Cap anymore." Rhodey shrugged. He was wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt that was probably too tight, although Carol couldn't find it in herself to complain. She wasn't wearing a bra ( _again_ ), but at least she still had a robe.

"Does he have reason not to?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," said Jim. "Like I said, I try to stay out of it. I respect the hell out of Steve Rogers, but no matter how many times we've butted heads, Tony is my best friend." The coffee maker beeped, and he stuck one of the mugs under its spout. When it was filled, he slid it across the counter to her. Carol was surprised to see that he'd given her the War Machine mug.

"There's a hundred different dynamics here that I don't understand," Carol confessed. "Everyone's known each other for years—"

"They've known you for years, too," Jim said.

"And that's part of the problem. Or part of the solution, maybe." She took a sip of her coffee, made a face, and then grabbed for the creamer. Coffee and artichoke dip certainly made for an unusual combination. "Either way, it's a hell of a learning curve."

"You aren't kidding about that," he said. 

"I don't know if I could have a relationship like that, either," she said. "I'd want a partner I could trust."

"Yeah?" He lowered his mug and fixed his dark eyes on her. "All or nothing, Danvers?"

Carol shrugged and looked away, unwilling to confront the sudden heaviness of the moment. "For all I know, I have a string of intergalactic lovers. I remind you of Captain Kirk, right?"

He laughed at that. "I'd say you're more of a Janeway. You can remember movies?"

"Some," Carol said. "I don't remember anything personal, so I know about Wrath of Khan, but I don't actually remember watching it. Very strange. It's got all the doctors stumped."

"You know," he said, "I think you told me once that Terminator was your favorite movie." There was a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His mouth was almost as nice as his forearms, Carol noticed.

"Really?" she said.

"Yep."

"Terminator, huh."

"Definitely."

"Kind of strange that I named my cat after a _Star Wars character,_ then."

He shrugged. "You're a strange one, Danvers."

"You'd know all about that, Rhodes," she shot back, and Rhodey laughed at her again. He liked it when she bit back. Carol, feeling smug, added that to her list: _I bite._

"So," she said. "Atlanta?"

"Yeah, I have family down there. I'm being rebranded soon, and they gave me a little leave before the big show."

"You're being reassigned?"

"Something like that." He set his coffee mug down and leaned over the counter to steal a handful of chips. "That crap Yon-Rogg pulled got me thinking about something I've been considering for a while now. I've spent a lot of time on foreign soil, but it seems like what we really need is a stronger homeland presence."

"Who are you working for?" Carol asked.

"Bouncing around between SHIELD, the Corps, and the Department of Defense. We'll see where I end up when this all shakes down."

"Fun," she said. 

"I do love the red tape," he agreed, and Carol grinned at him until she realized she had a smear of artichoke dip of her cheek. She wiped it off with her thumb and then stuck her thumb in her mouth. No reason to let it go to waste.

"What time do you fly out tomorrow?" she said around her hand.

"Whenever I feel like it," he said. "What, you thought I was taking a commercial flight when I have expensive and cutting-edge hardware at my command?"

"It's a long flight for a suit," Carol protested. 

"Worth it," Jim said. "You get it."

"You're forgetting about the amnesia," Carol said. 

He frowned at her, and Carol surreptitiously wiped the slobber on her hand off against her robe. "You haven't been up since the accident?" he said.

Carol shrugged and looked away. "The doctors told me not to push it," she said. "Figured it was better to get both my feet under me before I worried about leaving the ground." That sounded good. Reasonable. She was playing at nonchalance.

"Most of the Avengers have pilot's licenses. Any one of 'em would be happy to go with you if you don't feel up to it yourself," said Jim. "You've even got a little plane of your own, if you don't want to bother with the Quinjet."

Carol jerked. "I have an _airplane?"_ she said. "I thought I could fly."

"Oh, you can _definitely_ fly," Rhodey said. She couldn't tell if he was deliberately misunderstanding her, or if he'd missed the point, or if she was missing it. "But yeah, a Cessna 172. Tony told me you fixed it up yourself. I can get directions, if you want," he offered. "I'm not sure what airfield you normally fly out of, but I wouldn't mind seeing what your version of 'fixing up' involves." He was relaxed, friendly and expectant, everything she herself wasn't; she kept thinking that maybe if she could _remember_ , if she could just _fix_ what was wrong with her—

"Maybe later," Carol heard herself say, and she planted her bare feet on the floor and didn't move, didn't breathe, let the ground hold her fixed and firm and safe.

 

3.

_Hov'ring there,_  
_I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung_  
_My eager craft through footless halls of air…_

'Later' apparently meant 'when you get back from Atlanta,' in the mind of Jim Rhodes; Carol was in his passenger seat and on her way to Teterboro Airport before she could figure out how to refuse his offer without giving anything away.

"The Skyhawk's a good plane," Rhodey was saying. "They've made a lot of them. Peter—Parker, you know who he is?—mentioned that you use it to hop up to Boston." He didn't say why she would be going to Boston; to visit family, Carol assumed, but it was telling, wasn't it, that none of her family had turned up to see her. 

"I—yeah," she said. "Boston."

Jim snorted. "I hear that," he said. 

"How was Atlanta?" Carol said. She was feeling desperate for a change of subject, but she was also curious about Jim's family, about the kind of environment that produced a guy like him. The Avengers were rife with ex-military, but they tended more towards the black ops types than clean-cut, square-jawed heroes like Steve Rogers or Jim himself. On the other hand, Rhodey had implied more than once that his history wasn't exactly as free of extra-legal action as Carol had first assumed. 

"Hot," Jim said, and changed lanes. "My dad and my niece live there."

"Your niece?"

"Lila," he said. "Dad's raising her. She's a prodigy. Tony keeps threatening to kidnap her and raise her up to take over Stark Industries, but he hasn't seen her since she was knee-high."

"She's really that smart?"

He snorted, but even that didn't disguise his obvious pride. "Oh, definitely. She's a whiz with computers and machines. Dad doesn't even bother taking his car to the shop anymore—he just sets her loose in Auto Zone and tries to make sure she doesn't jab her eye out with a wrench."

Carol thought about the little girl who had visited her in the hospital—Kit. Her hero worship had been absolute, and that more than any other interaction had almost brought Carol to her knees. What the hell kind of person had she been, to inspire _that?_ It had been a simultaneous relief and disappointment to find out that she was an alcoholic adrenaline junkie with a string of short-term lovers and a family the mostly didn't talk to her.

"She sounds pretty amazing," Carol said instead. "It has to be hard, not being close."

"Yeah, well," Rhodey said. "I've been thinking about changing that. Moving base to Atlanta. It isn't like I can't get where I'm needed when they need me there, and Dad… He isn't getting any younger."

 _Oh,_ Carol thought. Of course he wouldn't—

"Haven't made up my mind yet, though," he said. "I've gotten used to being a little more centrally located."

Carol swallowed. "No," she said. "You should do it."

"You think so?"

"Trust me. I'm starting to think I wrote the book on missed opportunities," she said dryly. 

"Are you kidding me, Danvers? You seem like a lady who makes her own opportunities."

"Let's just say that forgetting everything about my life has offered some perspective." She was thinking about Jess, about how she should really tell her how much she appreciated her steady support; about her mother, about how maybe it was up to Carol herself to pick up the phone; about all those short-term lovers, about Kit, about taking off to the edge of space to avoid hitting her own limits—

Rhodey grunted. "Maybe so, but maybe it's the opportunities here that I'd be sorry I missed if I moved away." His eyes cut over to her, but Carol didn't know what to say. She was saved from having to say anything when an engine cut through the noise of the traffic; the plane was angling across the highway, starting its final approach to Teterboro, and Carol leaned forward to watch it.

"Piper Arrow," Jim said.

"PA-20," Carol said. "A student?"

"Yeah, they like those for teaching rookies how to fly in a glass cockpit. You remember that?"

"I can tell an intake manifold from an exhaust, but I had to be told my full name four times before it stuck."

"Huh," he said. "What is your full name?"

"Carol Susan Jane Danvers," said Carol. "I know. It's a mouthful."

"My middle name's 'Rupert,'" Rhodey offered.

"You're kidding."

He flashed her a fast grin before steering them into the exit lane. "Nope. My momma apparently thought I need to suffer for my sins. Of course, her name's 'Roberta'—figures she'd have a skewed sense of what to call a kid."

"Does she live in Atlanta?"

Rhodey took a right that had them whipping past a row of white hangers. He drove, Carol thought, like a fighter pilot—all precision turns and the barest adherence to the speed limit. Well, 'a' speed limit. "Nah," he said. "She lives on a Navajo reservation. Moved out there a couple of years ago when I needed her to lay low, and she's stayed out there ever since. She's one-quarter Navajo," he added. "I think she likes how different it is from being a big-city paralegal."

"Did you grow up in Georgia?" Carol asked.

"Philly," he said. "I've lived all over. Kind of like you—Jess tell you about that?"

"Boston, Colorado Springs, Texas, New York City, Westchester, and outer space," Carol said, "and a couple more. Wendy made me flashcards." And then, awkward, she remembered that no matter how much Rhodey felt like a missing piece in her life, he hadn't been a big part of it prior to her accident. "Do you know Wendy?"

"Your PA, right? I ran into her at the hospital a couple of time. She's got a good head on her shoulders."

"She's really into flashcards," Carol said. "Really, really into them." Wendy had made flashcards for everything Carol could want to know—places she'd lived, contacts in her phone, alter-egoes of every costumed hero in the United States… There was even a set of flashcards that had painstakingly cropped items from Carol's résumé pasted onto them. Memorizing those cards made her feel lonely in a way that everything else hadn't; there was no emotional attachment that came with knowing she'd grown up in Boston, no burst of sentiment, just a long list of empty places she had resided before, transient, she'd packed up and moved to the next requirement.

But hell, she'd (apparently) come back from worse, even if she couldn't remember what 'worse' might entail. Those places might have been empty, but she'd been brave enough to face them all the same.

"You'd come back to visit," she said. "If you moved. Wouldn't you?"

"You haven't seen the last of me, Danvers," he said.

"Is that a promise or a threat?"

"I was going for 'fact,' but leave it to you to escalate." He pulled up in front of the last hanger in the row and put the car into park. Carol let her hands fall to her lap; she made no move to get out, and Jim was apparently content to let her move at her own pace.

"So," she said. "James Rupert."

"So," he said. "Carol Susan Jane."

Carol pulled a face. "Let's not do that again," she said, and then she forced herself up and out of the car before her nerve failed her.

The key to the hanger was on her keychain, which proved once again that she belonged in this strange new world, and her hands knew without any direction from her brain that the door jammed. Jim, right behind her, reached over her shoulder, and a few seconds later the bifold door on the adjacent wall shuddered and began to wrench upwards. Within a breath the entire side of the hanger was gone, leaving only open air and letting in the sunlight. Her 172 was parked right in the middle of the floor; it was a neat, tidy plane, except for the handle that was dangling on a screw and a prayer from the cockpit door.

"You want to know why you have a plane?" Jim said. "That's a question you're gonna have to answer yourself, but if I had to guess…" He circled around the plane, ducked down to look at the prop, rapped his knuckles against the fuselage and chuckled when the dangling handle juddered in response. "If I had to guess, I'd guess that you know as well as I do that not all flight is created equal."

Carol stayed back far enough that the shadow of the wing didn't fall on her. "You sound like a fortune cookie," she said.

"Hey, you asked," Rhodey said. "And you weren't born flying under your own power any more than I was born in the War Machine armor. You had to learn from the ground up, in an aircraft like this one, and before you could learn, you had to _want_ it."

 _Did I?_ Had she wanted it? Jim did, so clearly she could see it written into the lines of his body. He wasn't afraid, he'd love nothing more than to climb into that cockpit and go hurtling through the sky. Carol, though—

Maybe it had only been a career to her, a way out of whatever dead end she'd hit. She couldn't imagine flying for the sheer joy of it, not when her last flight had taken her to the Karman line and then deserted her there to fall sixty-two miles straight down. She'd woken up without any identity at all, and the terror that had been the first thing she remembered feeling in her whole life was still eating at her. It lived in the pit of her stomach and in her heart and in her throat, and every time she so much as looked out the window it threatened to swallow her whole. Flying for a job, for a duty, because she had no other choice, that was one thing, but flying for the purity of the act itself—what else would she lose the next time she left the ground behind?

She had sweated through her shirt; she could feel it sticking to her back.

"Ready to take her up?" Rhodey asked.

"Headache," Carol said. "Better not to push it."

"Sure," Rhodey said. "Some other time."

All Carol wanted to do was go home, change into a dry shirt, and take a nap. She absolutely didn't want to watch Jim reach out with one finger and push the hanging cockpit handle back into place; but after he took his hand away it stayed there, either by some mechanism unknown to Carol or by sheer dint of will.

 

4.

_Up, up the long, delirious burning blue_  
_I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace_  
_Where never lark, or ever eagle flew—_

The roof of Avengers Tower was a lot higher than the roof of the hospital had been. There was no garden up here, either, but at least she had a bra on. Just, you know. In case of any surprise visitors.

She'd come up to escape the cluster of Avengers that were arguing furiously in the kitchen about something called an 'origin bomb.' Carol didn't want to know—or she wanted to know too much; it was hard to tell what she wanted for herself and what she refused to want out of fear of the woman she'd once been. That rebellious streak was going to get her in trouble one of these days. Maybe it already had.

And she was out here under the bright sky for the other reason, too—to taste the fear that sat under her tongue. It sat there, and it dared her; and now she was standing at the edge of the landing pad that capped the tower, staring eleven hundred feet straight down while her heart drummed out a tattoo on the inside of her chest.

Why the hell had she ever wanted _this?_

On second thought, maybe she'd go back inside, put on her fuzzy slippers, and curl up on the couch with Chewie. Nice, safe, warm, grounded. There was a _Xena: Warrior Princess_ on one of the several thousand television channels that suddenly became available when you were living with Tony Stark. 

She couldn't seem to bring herself to move away from the edge, though. Her hands had a chokehold on the safety rail, and the wind kept blowing her hair into her face. At an altitude of eleven hundred feet, the streets below looked like hairline cracks and the cars like some half-finished pointillist painting. Grand Central Station was somewhere down there, too, and to the southeast was the peak of the Chrysler Building.

The wind was probably why she didn't hear the rumbling concert of jets and repulsors that heralded the arrival of one of two people. One minute she was staring at the Chrysler Building, and the next Jim was hanging in midair in front of her.

"Rhodes, what the _shit,"_ Carol said with feeling.

Rhodey smirked at her—he had the faceplate of the armor flipped up—and then tossed her a jaunty salute that was not, strictly speaking, regulation. "Captain Marvel," he said. "Room up here for two?"

She stepped to the side, and he went up and over the railing and landed far more lightly than she would have believed possible in an exo-skeleton that heavy. The colors were different than what she'd seen in pictures; War Machine had always been silver and gunmetal grey, but the suit Rhodey was wearing now looked like something out of a jingoistic patriot's daydream. It was also a gorgeous piece of machinery, but she wasn't about to tell him that.

"This wouldn't be the rebranding you mentioned, would it?" she said. 

Rhodey popped the helmet off and tucked it under his arm. "Yeah. Like it?"

"Well," Carol said, "nobody's going to mistake you for a Canadian."

His grin was a lot less cocky than his earlier smirk, but Carol liked it no less. "Lady, you should be a diplomat," he said. "Fortunately, subtle's not what I'm going for." 

"That might be something we have in common."

He leaned against the railing; it was a far cry from Carol's white-knuckled grip. "Maybe," he said. "Look, Carol—can I be frank?"

"Can I stop you?" she shot back, and then immediately regretted it. "Sorry. That was… Yes, go ahead."

"What are you doing up here by yourself? Hey, no"—he held up a hand—"I'm not criticizing, and I don't blame you for needing some space, but that doesn't seem like what's going on here."

Once upon a time, or at least a couple of weeks ago, she'd liked how blunt he was. Currently, it was hard to remember why; but she was also tired of being defensive, tired of fear, tired of… just _tired._

"You like it, right?" she said. "That suit of yours, or… the Skyhawk… you _like_ it."

"I do," Jim said. His mouth was turned down at the corners, and his face was taut with confusion. 

"I don't," Carol said. "It scares the hell out of me."

"Mechanical failure?" he said. "No. That's not what you mean, is it—the suit, the Skyhawk—" His gaze left her face and traveled down to her hands; she was hanging on to the rail so tightly now that it had started to warp. "Heights. Flying—" He choked a little, like he couldn't believe what he was about to say. _"Falling."_

Carol looked away, back down, down and down and down. That was confirmation enough.

"You haven't been up since the accident, have you?" he said. "Shit, Danvers. No wonder you're up here." She tensed and waited for him to say that she didn't have anything to be afraid of—or maybe he'd tell her that her fear was perfectly understandable—maybe he'd say—

"You miss it."

"What?" Carol said.

Rhodey shrugged. "You're afraid—I get that. But…" He reached out and tucked one of the stray pieces of her hair behind her ear; his touch was featherweight despite the heavy gauntlets. "Did nobody tell you?" he said. _"You love it."_

Carol's mouth was hanging open. "And yeah, maybe you're scared," he continued, "but this, I swear to you, this has not changed, or I wouldn't keep finding you on rooftops. It's worth a little fear. It's worth just about everything."

"Oh," Carol said, and just like that, the world swung around her and settled back into place. "But I… I can't. It can't be that—"

"What?" Jim said. "That easy?" He took a couple of steps back, dropped his helmet back on his head, and fired up his jet boots. He held there, hovering a foot or two off the roof, and then he held out a hand to her in obvious invitation. "Why not?" And then the smirk was back. "Gonna let a Marine show you up? Do I have to dare you?"

Carol looked back down at the street below, and then she looked at Rhodey's outstretched hand. Maybe it was time. Maybe this was her sign; maybe this made it time to stop looking down and start looking up. Her heart was still hammering loud enough to contest the wind, but something new was overwhelming it: curiosity mingled with anticipation.

She reached out—

And set her hand in Rhodey's—

And closed her eyes—

And when she opened them again, the sun was that much closer. There were clouds on the horizon, cotton-candy cumulous clouds that hung over the East River, and beyond that was only the endless, delirious blue. The wind was even more ferocious at this height, and it whipped Carol's hair behind her in a frenetic tangle; she realized there was nothing below her and nothing above and couldn't stop herself from letting out a loud whoop of glee.

"There it is," Rhodey shouted. Carol squeezed his fingers and then let go; this was easy, this was _effortless_ , and even though the fear was still there, it seemed inconsequential. She wondered how fast she could go, if Jim would be able to keep up—

She swooped past and tagged him on the back. "Come on, Jarhead!" she called back. "Think you can catch me?"

He was quick, she had to give him that; he stayed right on her tail until they hit the bay, but then Carol poured on speed. Every time she thought she'd hit a limit, she ended up burning past it. Rhodey was right—this was worth it, this was worth _everything_ , and the old bite of fear was nothing compared to the love that was like a supernova setting her blood on fire.

She rolled over on her back and waggled her fingers at him. Rhodey shouted something, but it was lost to the wind, and, laughing, Carol faced front and shot off towards the horizon. After all, there was nothing stopping her from finding out if that blue was really infinite; she had someone she trusted on her six, and ahead was nothing but sky—

 

5.

_And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod_  
_The high untrespassed sanctity of space,_  
_Put out my hand, and touched the face of God._

She was wearing her fuzzy slippers when Captain America came to her. He was flanked by a god and a legend, and the weight he carried on his face and his shoulders made her remember falling.

"We need you," he said. "I know you're recovering. I know this is more to ask than anyone should have to bear—"

"Of course I'll come," Carol said. "I'm an Avenger."

**Author's Note:**

> Suggested listening: [Fear of Flying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzMKLGXFmgw) by Picture House.


End file.
